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White Man’s Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence
by Sidney Harring. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1998. In recent years numerous important books have appeared which deal with the history of aboriginal populations in early Canada. Although these studies add enormously to our understanding of the role played by native peoples in the British North American and Canadian communities, there has… Read more »
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Westward Bound: Sex, Violence, the Law, and the Making of a Settler Society
by Lesley Erickson, Independent Historian and Researcher, Vancouver. Published with UBC Press, 2011. The history of crime and punishment is one of the principal lenses through which historians of the law investigate the relationship between the law in the books and the ‘law in action,’ and the uses of law to regulate relations among social… Read more »
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Uncertain Justice: Canadian Women and Capital Punishment 1754-1953
by F. Murray Greenwood, Emeritus Professor of History, University of British Columbia and Beverley Boissery, Independant Scholar. Published with Dundurn Press, 2000. In recent years, scholars in all disciplines, feminists and traditionalists, have increasingly recognized how significant issues of gender are in understanding most aspects of the human condition. Indeed gender as a category of analysis… Read more »
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"Race", Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies
by James St. G. Walker, Professor of History and Associate Chair of Graduate Studies at the University of Waterloo. Published with Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997. Professor James Walker is a distinguished historian who has made a substantial contribution to understanding the role of minority groups, especially aboriginal populations and those of African ancestry, in the… Read more »
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The Law of the Land: The Advent of the Torrens System in Canada
by Greg Taylor, Professor, Faculty of Law, Monash University, Australia. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2008. The Torrens system of land titles registration was introduced to what is now British Columbia in the mid-nineteenth century, and later spread to the rest of western Canada and to Ontario. In telling the story of the various… Read more »
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Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume IV: Beyond the Law: Lawyers and Business in Canada, 1830-1930
Edited by Carol Wilton. Published with Butterworths Canada, 1990. Beyond the Law has been called “the first full-length collection offering a serious scholarly treatment of the role of the legal profession in any aspect of Canadian history”. These essays explore new ground in tracing the increasingly complex involvement of lawyers in Canadian business during a… Read more »
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Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950
by Constance Backhouse, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1999. Colour-Coded has been translated into French and published in Quebec as De La Couleur des Lois: White supremacy had a tenacious hold on the historical roots of the Canadian legal system. Backhouse presents convincing case studies to illustrate how… Read more »
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Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault Law in Canada, 1900-1975
by Constance Backhouse, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa. Published with Irwin Law, 2008. An engaging and powerful book about sexual assault crimes in Canadian history, by Professor Constance Backhouse, whose previous books for the Osgoode Society have won major awards. Using a case-study approach, Professor Backhouse explores nine sexual assault trials from across the country… Read more »
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Canadian State Trials Volume III: Political Trials and Security Measures, 1840-1914
edited by Barry Wright, Department of Law, Carleton University, and Dr. Susan Binnie. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2009. This third volume of the Osgoode Society’s Canadian State Trials series covers the period from the 1840s to the First World War. It examines a range of political trials as traditionally defined, including those arising… Read more »
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Property on Trial: Canadian Cases in Context
edited by Eric Tucker, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, Bruze Ziff and James Muir, Professors, University of Alberta Law School. Published with Irwin Law, 2012. Despite the huge strides made by Canadian legal history in recent decades, we do not know as much as we should about the law of property, a crucial aspect of… Read more »